equal has never been seen, and caballeros I have known
who would swear that Jose's riata can stretch to fifty paces and more to
find its mark."

"Is it anxiety for me that makes you so solicitous?" demanded Jack,
speaking low so that the peons could not overhear.

"Perhaps--and perhaps it is pride; for I know well the skill and the
bravery of my Jose." Again the twist of her pretty, pouting lips,
blood-red and tempting.

Her Jose! For just a minute the face of Teresita showed vague to him
before his wrathful eyes.

"When you tell your beads again, Senorita," he advised her crisply, "say
a prayer or two for your Jose also. For I promise you now that I will
shame him before your face, and if he lives afterward to seek your
sympathy, it will be by grace of my mercy!"

"Santa Maria, what a fierce senor!" Her laughter mocked him. "Till the
fiesta I shall pray--for you!" Then she turned and ran, looking over her
shoulder now and again to laugh at him.

Always before, when she had teased and flouted and fled laughing, Jack
had pursued her with long strides, and in the first sequestered nook had
made her lips pay a penalty. But this time he stood still and let her
go--which must have puzzled the senorita very much, and perhaps piqued
her pride as well. For the girl who flouts and then flees laughing
surely invites pursuit and an inexorable exaction of the penalty. And if
she is left to flee in safety, then must the flouted one pay for his
stupidity, and pay high in the coin of love.

CHAPTER XVIII

WHAT IS LOVE WORTH?

Valencia swung down from his belathered horse as lightly as though he
had not spent seven hours in the saddle and during those seven hours had
covered more miles than he would have years to live. His smile was wide
and went as deep as his emotions had thus far plumbed his nature, and
his voice had the exultant note of a child who has wonderful news to
tell. He gave Dade a letter, and his very gesture was triumphant; and
the eyes were eager that watched his majordomo read. He bubbled with
words that he would like to say, but he waited.

"So you didn't get there in time, after all," Dade observed, looking up
from Jack's characteristic signature, in which the tail of the "k"
curled around the whole like a mouse lying asleep. "Manuel came back
this morning, and the whole camp is talking nothing but duelo. I thought
you said--"

"Senor, the saints would not permit that I should arrive first,"
V